3 ms·

I love the idea behind this, and the site/implementation feel solid-- but it's a productivity nightmare. I dunno if you've read Harrison Burgeron (by Vonnegut)

I love the idea behind this, and the site/implementation feel solid-- but it's a productivity nightmare. I dunno if you've read Harrison Burgeron (by Vonnegut): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron It's a dystopian future where everyone is equal by bringing exceptional people of any kind down to the lowest common denominator. To make smart people less smart, they put buzzers in their ears that went off at random intervals to disrupt concentration. That's pretty much what you're doing. There are a lot of productivity studies that support this... Showing that ANYTHING that takes people out of the "zone" (when they are in it) makes it likelier that they'll shift to something else than if the distraction didn't occur. This includes IM, phone calls, knocks at the door, email dings, whatever. Would be interesting to run RescueTime at a business before and after-- you might actually be doing less damage than you cause (i.e. time saved reconstructing time, nagging people to do time entry, etc., might outweigh the distraction/derailing that you're causing).

jamesbritt 18y ago
"There are a lot of productivity studies that support this... Showing that ANYTHING that takes people out of the "zone" (when they are in it) makes it likelier that they'll shift to something else than if the distraction didn't occur. This includes IM, phone calls, knocks at the door, email dings, whatever." We (HCS) are aware of the cost of disruption, but in actual practice we haven't found that to be true for us when using JotBot. It's easy enough to ignore if we want to, but still reminding us to note what we're doing, and if you're still doing what you were doing before, noting is trivial (since it recalls your last entry). Maybe it's habituation, but we wouldn't use it ourselves if we didn't find it an overall win. It is in no way "derailing" us when we work. BTW, the time interval is configurable. While ANY interruption might be unacceptable to some people, getting a prompt every 2 hours to enter info, while still a potential disruption, might still be better than having no notes at all on how the day was spent. We know this isn't going to be for everyone, just as RescueTime isn't for everyone. We have found, though, that it works for us, and initial feedback suggests it works for some others, too.
- webwright 18y ago
  "It is in no way "derailing" us when we work." Would you notice it if it did derail you 10% of the time? 5%? What's the interval? I'm not suggesting that it IS derailing you when you work (though I suspect it is some), I'm just curious how measurable that is and how you measure the "overall win". Saying that it "works" for you and others feels really subjective to me. What's the goal? Less overall time dorking around with time entry? More time spent on "good" stuff? More accurate time entry? If we actually gave full export of RescueTime data (which we will someday!), you could measure what percentage of the time users return to their task after your app comes into focus. Better yet, you could measure the mean time spent on task AFTER your app interrupts (compared to before). If you're going to sell the concept to productivity nuts, it'd be a great thing to study/prove down the road. Either way, I'm gonna give your app a try for a few days to see how it feels (and more importantly, how it changes my RescueTime data! ;-) ). I hope you don't take offense. I like the idea (if you ever meet Paul Buccheit, ask him about TimePie!)... But my crash course in productivity studies over the past year tell me that most productivity academics would run screaming from the idea. 'Course, academics are wrong all the time.
  - jamesbritt 18y ago
    "I hope you don't take offense." Not at all. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to comment, and the feedback is valuable. " I like the idea (if you ever meet Paul Buccheit, ask him about TimePie!)... But my crash course in productivity studies over the past year tell me that most productivity academics would run screaming from the idea. 'Course, academics are wrong all the time." Here's the catch: I can be as productive as all hell, but if I can't accurately bill for my time, I'm screwed. And it's not just knowing home nay minutes I spent on this or that project, it's being able to look at notes attached to specific times that tell a larger story. Plus, the "pull" approach serves a secondary value: if I'm getting distracted and not staying on my tasks (say, reading HN instead of fixing JotBot bugs :)), the periodic "What did you do?" prompt gets me to realize this. It's an awareness tool as well. And that awareness comes then, at the time when I can get myself on back on track. So, while I have no real data on this, the routine reminder may be making me more productive. I agree that this is quite subjective; all I can say was I wasn't happy with the options I found, and find myself better off having built JotBot. I'll have to see about giving RescueTime another shot. Last time I tried, there was a problem because I use Linux.
arnorhs 18y ago
[whoops, commented on the wrong reply, sorry :-) ] You have to remember that there are actually a lot of companies out there that are doing contracting work and working on the hour for various clients. For those clients you need to show what you're billing them for. On top of that, it could be for any kind of work - not just programming - design, engineering work, contractor work (builders etc), electricians, you name it...
- webwright 18y ago
  True 'nuff. I ran a software dev shop with a pretty big team for about 7 years. I think this is a GREAT product for consultants, who would happily trade a little focus/productivity for easier/more accurate time entry.
- jamesbritt 18y ago
  "You have to remember that there are actually a lot of companies out there that are doing contracting work and working on the hour for various clients. For those clients you need to show what you're billing them for." This was a real win for us with JotBot. HCS has some clients who, while generally pretty easy-going about invoice details, sometimes want to know just how time was spent for this or that bill. So we can now go back and see not just the time spent on a project, and the specific project categories, but read the various notes added to flesh out those time records. Often I want to know just why something took me so long, so it's nice to have notes written at the time of the activity. The reporting features really help there.

jamesbritt 18y ago

"There are a lot of productivity studies that support this... Showing that ANYTHING that takes people out of the "zone" (when they are in it) makes it likelier that they'll shift to something else than if the distraction didn't occur. This includes IM, phone calls, knocks at the door, email dings, whatever." We (HCS) are aware of the cost of disruption, but in actual practice we haven't found that to be true for us when using JotBot. It's easy enough to ignore if we want to, but still reminding us to note what we're doing, and if you're still doing what you were doing before, noting is trivial (since it recalls your last entry). Maybe it's habituation, but we wouldn't use it ourselves if we didn't find it an overall win. It is in no way "derailing" us when we work. BTW, the time interval is configurable. While ANY interruption might be unacceptable to some people, getting a prompt every 2 hours to enter info, while still a potential disruption, might still be better than having no notes at all on how the day was spent. We know this isn't going to be for everyone, just as RescueTime isn't for everyone. We have found, though, that it works for us, and initial feedback suggests it works for some others, too.

webwright 18y ago
"It is in no way "derailing" us when we work." Would you notice it if it did derail you 10% of the time? 5%? What's the interval? I'm not suggesting that it IS derailing you when you work (though I suspect it is some), I'm just curious how measurable that is and how you measure the "overall win". Saying that it "works" for you and others feels really subjective to me. What's the goal? Less overall time dorking around with time entry? More time spent on "good" stuff? More accurate time entry? If we actually gave full export of RescueTime data (which we will someday!), you could measure what percentage of the time users return to their task after your app comes into focus. Better yet, you could measure the mean time spent on task AFTER your app interrupts (compared to before). If you're going to sell the concept to productivity nuts, it'd be a great thing to study/prove down the road. Either way, I'm gonna give your app a try for a few days to see how it feels (and more importantly, how it changes my RescueTime data! ;-) ). I hope you don't take offense. I like the idea (if you ever meet Paul Buccheit, ask him about TimePie!)... But my crash course in productivity studies over the past year tell me that most productivity academics would run screaming from the idea. 'Course, academics are wrong all the time.
- jamesbritt 18y ago
  "I hope you don't take offense." Not at all. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to comment, and the feedback is valuable. " I like the idea (if you ever meet Paul Buccheit, ask him about TimePie!)... But my crash course in productivity studies over the past year tell me that most productivity academics would run screaming from the idea. 'Course, academics are wrong all the time." Here's the catch: I can be as productive as all hell, but if I can't accurately bill for my time, I'm screwed. And it's not just knowing home nay minutes I spent on this or that project, it's being able to look at notes attached to specific times that tell a larger story. Plus, the "pull" approach serves a secondary value: if I'm getting distracted and not staying on my tasks (say, reading HN instead of fixing JotBot bugs :)), the periodic "What did you do?" prompt gets me to realize this. It's an awareness tool as well. And that awareness comes then, at the time when I can get myself on back on track. So, while I have no real data on this, the routine reminder may be making me more productive. I agree that this is quite subjective; all I can say was I wasn't happy with the options I found, and find myself better off having built JotBot. I'll have to see about giving RescueTime another shot. Last time I tried, there was a problem because I use Linux.

arnorhs 18y ago

[whoops, commented on the wrong reply, sorry :-) ] You have to remember that there are actually a lot of companies out there that are doing contracting work and working on the hour for various clients. For those clients you need to show what you're billing them for. On top of that, it could be for any kind of work - not just programming - design, engineering work, contractor work (builders etc), electricians, you name it...

webwright 18y ago
True 'nuff. I ran a software dev shop with a pretty big team for about 7 years. I think this is a GREAT product for consultants, who would happily trade a little focus/productivity for easier/more accurate time entry.
jamesbritt 18y ago
"You have to remember that there are actually a lot of companies out there that are doing contracting work and working on the hour for various clients. For those clients you need to show what you're billing them for." This was a real win for us with JotBot. HCS has some clients who, while generally pretty easy-going about invoice details, sometimes want to know just how time was spent for this or that bill. So we can now go back and see not just the time spent on a project, and the specific project categories, but read the various notes added to flesh out those time records. Often I want to know just why something took me so long, so it's nice to have notes written at the time of the activity. The reporting features really help there.